Legal help needed

edmaul69

@BuZz i have some friends who have had issues with a guy selling bootleg copies of their colecovision games. I am trying to get all the info i can from them to help you. They do happen to have a friend in ebay that shut him down and permanently banned him from ebay. If he is selling the software on ebay i might be able to help with that. Any copyrights you have will help. But no matter what he does he has no legal rights to your work from the second you created it and i should be able to get the info you need to fight his copyright.

auswear

I have registered several trademarks and unfortunately if someone gets in before you there's not much you can do. Even if you own the website and they have the trademark in your country, they can legally take it from you.

He's created it in the correct class however from what I can tell, he's only trademarked a logo and not a word. Applications go into a public national gazette for 6 months prior to approval so people can object to them.. but honestly, who's going to check that every few months? My trademarks go through easily every time.

It looks like he's created some kind of international trademark but I can't see what Countries it's applicable to. Each Country you choose has it's own associated cost - you can't just blanket trademark the entire globe.

If you can find out for sure if it's just that ugly typeface he trademarked they you're ok, but if it's the word then there isn't much you can do. The easiest (and cheapest) option is to change the name of Retropie (and trademark it before you go live!)

UDb23

It seems Retropie is not yet a registered trademark in Europe, according to EUIPO site.
Single class registration is 850 euro.
We could think of reaching the amount by donations so you can register it, at least in europe.

Rascas

@auswear Yes, this is more or less what I know from my experience in my country, I think it works more or less the same here. This is a bit complicated, because like you said, you can register different parts/things like, names, logos, intelectual property etc, and national or international, and depending what you do, the price changes alot.
I am not aware of applications (intelectual property ?), but if it is like you said, since it seems that in this case it was approved for opposition in 2016-10-11, can't the real RetroPie still make an objection ?

Nismo

I don't understand how some people can do this so easily, it's a shame.

FlyingTomahawk

Sorry to hear about your troubles.
This seems to be common practice these days. They register all kinds of names and URLs even stuff that doesn't exist yet. Just so that you have to pay them later to release that name or brand if you want it. Very sly way of doing business.
These people are scum, the only thing they do is think how to piss on other peoples hard work so that they can enrich themselves.

Those registration offices should really rethink their policies and stop people from registerering brand or names that they are not directly connected or associated with. These things should not happen in the first place.

Worst case shut down everything, rename, rebrand, register everything and I mean everything , every single pixel. Then re-launch.

caver01

What I don't understand is their angle. If they are trying to profit from selling something called RetroPie and then RetroPie rebrands, they have to do it all over again. It seems like you would want to leave well enough alone if you don't want the product to pivot underneath your marketing effort.

hooperre

His uploaded project on GitHub admits he isn't the original creator of EmulationStation.

Capeman

Contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they sometimes offer pro-bono legal help to open source programmers who don't have the resources to pay for legal help. https://www.eff.org

Or, drop the E from the project name and submit a copyright for RetroPi... i've never really understood the connection to baking.

detron

if there is a separate donation point for this legal issue let me know. I would like to help. may not be much, but if a lot of people give a little, I know it would help.

detron

so, the same description for both Retropie and Emulation Station. and not even a good one.

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edmaul69

What you should do is try to crowdfund to pay for an ip lawyer. Then if you get the emulationstation guys do the same to pitch in you could make it cheaper and go after him for both.

mediamogul

Wow, talk about an all-around scumbag. It looks like he even got tech support from you guys when he was just getting started with RetroPie...

http://blog.petrockblock.com/community/members/eddywebs/forums/

edmaul69

@mediamogul in the legal fight this could be a good thing. It is proof that it is not his work.

Fruitybit

Donated again, I hope it will help- kinda makes me think this should be in help and support!) now we can give something back I hope.

mediamogul

None of this should even be necessary. At my core, I'm actually a pretty cynical person and it's served me well over the years, but when I see an absolute new low in human behavior, it still gives me pause for thought. The lengths people have gone through in the recent past to steal a piece this project's identity for their own personal gain has consistently been disgusting, but the attempt to outright take the branding identity through legal channels absolutely blows my mind.

I don't believe in karma as being some sort of magical force, but I do believe that people who move through life with no regard for other people ultimately find themselves in a situation where they have no one willing to support or tolerate them and many even actively working against them to make their life difficult. If this is to be believed at all and that his actions here represent a pattern of despicable behavior, then I have no doubt that Aditya Rawat will find himself on the losing end of life before long.

romain

Hi,
I can't really help you with this issue, just to say that there are some much crooked people around the world that I loose day after day my faith in humanity. But there are they are always people willing to help and support and that's a good sign that, the world is not totally insane after all. The only advise I could dive is to contact Ebay and Github to see if they can banned him because he tries to overcome your rights with this project. Also, a publication on slashdot.org could be cool to inform the world and let the geek worl know about your current issue and maybe help. Good Luck! I love Retropie and really hope this idiot will have what he deserved.

Capeman

Start loading up the official img with a ton of pirated roms, then forward all the lawsuits and take down notices to the guy who owns the copyright.

Lyle_JP

@Capeman It's a "burn it all down and salt the earth" tactic. It would destroy RetroPie with it.

Capeman

@Lyle_JP I know, just being facetious